December 12, 2017

"... according to copies of messages turned over to Congress Tuesday night by the Justice Department," Politico reports.

“I just saw my first Bernie Sanders bumper sticker. Made me want to key the car," [Lisa] Page wrote in an August 2015 exchange.

“He’s an idiot like Trump. Figure they cancel each other out,” Strzok replied....
Responding to a Washington Post story in 2015 about Trump saying it hadn’t been proven that Russian President Vladimir Putin had killed anyone, Page wrote: "What an utter idiot."

In a March 2016 message, Page exclaimed: "God trump is a loathsome human....omg he's an idiot."

"He's awful," Strzok replied....

"God Hillary should win 100,000,000 - 0," Strzok wrote the same month.

"Also did you hear [Trump] make a comment about the size of his d*ck earlier? This man can not be president," Page said later in the exchange.

The IG probably got ahold of these texts because the two lovers were using a government Blackberry. No expectation of privacy. Violation of the rules. A firing offense. Both idiots. Should have had a private server.

I don't know if you saw this on Instapundit but apparently exchanging email isn't the only questionable action. But my question is: is the "approval" mentioned below before sending the warrant to the court which would be an internal completeness check or is it intended to be independent?

And recall they're sleeping with each other but both married to others.

________I’m hearing from a source that Lisa Page was involved in approving Peter Strzok’s warrant requests to the FISC and possibly elsewhere. Can you confirm or deny if this was the case? And please tell me what her job title and function are in your office. Thanks.

Them (via spokesman Joshua Stueve):

Lisa Page, who was an attorney on detail to the Special Counsel’s office, returned to the FBI’s Office of the General Counsel in mid-July.

Me again:

Thank you but that doesn’t answer my question. What role did Lisa Page have in the handling of warrant applications, and in particular those involving Peter Strzok?

I learned today that Mueller has a waiver for some conflict of interest. Politico noted that DOJ usually releases the waiver plus the reason for the waiver . But this time they are refusing to release the reason for the waiver.

So Hill and DNC collude with Steele and Russians against Trump, FBI and DOJ and Intelligence agencies collude with Dems and Steele against Trump, and they pursue their collusion by accusing Trump of collusion.

If you want to know where the idiots reside, read the comments at Politico. They clearly see nothing wrong with the comments by these FBI personnel. Why? They agree with Strzok and Page that Trump is an idiot. They are clueless as to the gravity of the situation for Mueller.

Oh, God, these people are supposed to be hi-falutin' lawyers what's gonna clean out the Augean stables of the Trump administrations & bring down good government from the heavens to us benighted peons?

And they're so fuckin' stupid they text each other shit like this? On anything but encrypted devices? What, they thought that they'd go after a sitting president of the same party that controls Congress, & that this crap would stay private?

My question, that I ask myself over & over as each & every new abomination comes to light, is: where do we get these people?

That they think Trump to be an idiot is one thing (though, ahem, one might note his self-acccumulated wealth and electoral victory as contrary evidence). The question is whether they did their jobs in an unbiased manner to the best of their ability. And the answer appears to be in the negative.

If these FBI people all got fired from Team Mueller and demoted it's obvious there is a problem. All these FBI people were in the inner circle of Comey, one of them was managing the the fake Trump docs with Fusion GPS, Steele and FBI, his wife a Russian specialist was working for Fusion. The AG Sessions is waiting for a report on where another Special Council should be appointed to investigate the illegal collusion of the FBI and Intel agencies with the Hillary Campaign.

The Department of Justice is deeply concerned by what appears to have been the weaponization of FBI by partisans in furtherance of political goals, which permitted the vast collection of highly personal information from dozens of ____Republicans without even taking modest steps to secure this information.

Your post restores my faith in humanity a tiny bit. [Breaking news: Doug Jones just WON a senate seat in Alabama!!] Trump-bashing is the national pastime; Trump is the butt of so many jokes; that's the only thing he is good for. Then, upon reading the absurd comments to this post, I lose my faith in humanity all over again. But, Roy Moore, the alleged child molester, is history, and a bad memory. Good night and good luck!

So pointing out the obvious truth in private text messages about someone who wasn’t even president is now wrong? Of course Trump is an idiot. His Secretary of State and chief of staff have said worse about the Doofus in Chief.

So the one guy got a payoff from McAuliffe in the form of a $750,000 "campaign contribution" -- McCabe?And another FBI guy had a wife working at Fusion GPS -- Ohr?And the Hillary campaign funneled money through attorneys to Fusion GPS. And Fusion GPS paid reporters to publish opposition research.And the dossier was rubbish that Comey presented to Trump so it would become newsworthy ANF then illegally leaked documents through a law professor friend.

And these two wrote these things which were dumped on election night to hide the FBI decline.And Page probably used the dossier to get the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign and transition.And a FISC judge recused himself.

Boggles the mind why anybody would suspect the FBI has been politicized.

And further affirms why I left the Republican Party under W. Homeland Security was a terrifically stupid idea.

Yes, there is a problem with federal employees mouthing off about their superiors on unencrypted devices that permit retrieval of said conversations by all sorts of third parties in the future. This is a problem if the target of ridicule is Republican, Democratic, Trump, Obama, it doesn't matter who. This is a massive violation of policies & procedures.

But, for you two fuckwits, Trump is the target so it's all good. I really have to wonder what you two do for a living that such unprofessional behavior can be considered tolerable.

I have been reading about the FBI New York office - known as Trumplandia - and their ties to and illicit work with True Pundit, a right-wing pro-Trump site.

In general, I am all for investigations of all kinds and in all directions. We have rules and regulations for good reason, and one of those reasons is that people left to their own devices often behave badly. If these guys broke the law, then they should be punished.

In addition, in this case, as someone who has serious concerns from the other direction (i.e. that rogue FBI agents conspired to with the Trump campaign to falsely accuse Clinton of nefarious crimes e.g. pedophilia), I would definitely welcome an investigation of the FBI and the political activities of its employees.

I think these trivial e-mails give plausible denial to the real reason for firing Strzok, which is that he was caught leaking without the permission of Robert "The FBI White-Washer" Mueller, who himself intends to manage all his staff's constant leaking.

The proper punishment for such e-mails is a verbal or written reprimand -- not removal from the staff. Strzok's real offense to Mueller is something much more serious.

I do not assume that the leaker to Politico is an opponent of Robert "The FBI White-Washer" Mueller. On the contrary, Politico perhaps received these e-mail excerpts in a leak from Mueller himself.

Strzok was an individual FBI employee whom Mueller has sacrificed for the good of Mueller's focus on his #1 goal of white-washing the FBI as an institution. When Mueller was asked to become the Special Counsel, he knew already that the FBI had been spying on Trump's campaign staff based on a FISA warrant that was based on Christopher Steele's dossier. Mueller intended to keep all that secret from the public.

However, the public is crowd-sourcing an investigation of Mueller's investigation. Ironically, Mueller is disgracing himself, his "investigation" and the FBI itself.

The whole purpose of appointing a special counselor was to produce a resolution that would be accepted as fair and nonpartisan by the large public.

By working relentlessly to prosecute at least one scapegoat among Trump's associates (someone like Scooter Libby), Mueller is ruining that main purpose for appointing a Special Counsel.

"that such unprofessional behavior can be considered tolerable." Not just tolerable, desirable. Trump is an idiot, therefore federal employees, including FBI agents, including agents closely connected to highly sensitive investigations, should freely ridicule their superiors. As long as they ridicule the right people.

The sense of impunity among the main figures, until the firing by Mueller, is the most telling. They think they are safe. They think they have the power, They think the higher ups have their backs. People in that position who think they can say anything, will believe they can do anything.

We don't know the full scope of the scandal yet. Of course, prog approval of "unprofessional behavior" is not a scandal: it's expected.

These e-mails were selected from among THOUSANDS of e-mails that Strzok and Page wrote to each other.

Why was so much time and effort spent to study THOUSANDS of e-mails between those two love-birds?

Not only were the THOUSANDS of e-mails read, they were also STUDIED and DISCUSSED and PUNISHED by some group of top officials.

Supposedly, Robert "The FBI White-Washer" Mueller is super-busy saving US Democracy from evil election-meddlers, but instead he and his closest associates spent hours and hours analyzing trivial chats between love-birds Strzok and Page.

For at least a while, analyzing those trivial love-bird chats was much more important to Mueller than catching evil election-meddlers.

Not only have Strzok and Page been removed from Mueller's staff, their extramarital sexual affair has been revealed to the public. That is the worst punishment that the two love-birds have received.

This reminds me about the public exposure of Paul Manafort's having a mistress. A few days after Mueller's staff conducted its surprise, morning search of Manafort's home, the tabloid The Globe published a story that Manafort had a mistress.

Of course, Manafort's two daughters were upset by reading this as they were standing in the cashier line to pay for their groceries at their local supermarket.

This leaked story in The Globe was a lesson to all of Trump's rich associates who have mistresses and also have daughters. Such stories in tabloids are the consequence of resisting Mueller's investigation.

The exposure of the extramarital affair of Strzok and Page is a similar lesson to all of Mueller's subordinates in his Special Counsel staff. If you are going to be leaking without Mueller's permission, then you better not be having an extramarital affair.

Really who was the mistress, mike, that might have explained the more extravagant expenses, he just like to dress well. Who in the bureau was nit in the tank for red queen, perhaps a few grunt agents trunpland came from journolistr Spencer three then tbroyfh the glass'ackerman.

@Mke Sylvester "The whole purpose of appointing a special counselor was to produce a resolution that would be accepted as fair and nonpartisan by the large public."

I'm confused by this statement. Wasn't the whole point of appointing a special counselor to investigate claims of collusion and other connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, and to either exonerate the Trump campaign or pursue criminal charges, depending on what was discovered?

Trump has always angrily and loudly denied *any* connection to Russia. If that is true, shouldn't the allegations be relatively easily disproven?

So far, there has been no exculpatory evidence that I have read and quite a bit of inculpatory evidence. But obviously we're not privy to everything that Mueller has.

We did it! Doug Jones has won Alabama's special Senate election and is headed to Washington to become the state's next U.S. Senator.

This is a victory for hardworking Alabama families and for Democrats nationwide. Hundreds of thousands of supporters from all over the country rallied to make phone calls, send text messages, share social media posts, and donate whatever they could to help Doug get out the vote today.

And we got the job done. Together.

We've proven all year long that we can win anywhere when we invest in our state parties, mobilize the grassroots, and employ all of our best practices, tools, and technologies to help our candidates win.

We have all of the momentum heading into the new year -- but we know that Trump and his Republicans are going to fight tooth and nail to keep control of Congress.

Tonight, we proved yet again that we can beat the GOP -- with your help, we can take the fight to them in all 50 states.

Pitch in $10 or more to help Democrats prepare for victory up and down the ticket in 2018.

The IG probably got ahold of these texts because the two lovers were using a government Blackberry. No expectation of privacy.

Like KittyM and other left wingers here, they assumed that everyone agreed with them. They could not imagine that there were people who would turn them in. Mueller is next when the COI waiver is investigated. They are hiding it.

Rex Tillerson, Trump's SecState, declared Donald to be a "fucking moron," and I think Tillerson almost has it right. "Fucking imbecile" is probably a better description.

Here is an example of the hatred by the left. This is a cold civil war and we are not at the end. The Tillerson 'Quote" has been denied and it is another effort to feed red meat to the idiots like gadfly.

The Alabama Senate race is more red meat and the LA Times is hysterical about it. The WaPoo got Moore on the last minute hit job and we will see more like this. The target is Trump and the silly women Kelly MeAgain is using to do CPR on her ratings.

You can see an example of the hysteria from "walter." They think this is it. Trump is Next !

Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS in April 2016 to produce opposition research on Trump, including the infamous anti-Trump dossier, which Fusion outsourced to former British spy Christopher Steele. ( RELATED: CNN’s Undisclosed Ties To Fusion GPS)

CNN and Fusion GPS are connected by individuals who used to work at the WSJ.

That they think Trump to be an idiot is one thing (though, ahem, one might note his self-acccumulated wealth and electoral victory as contrary evidence).

Trump definitely started rich, but you don't survive in NYC real estate if you're not pretty cunning. It's amazing they can still assume he's stupid when they went from laughing at him to wetting themselves in six months.

The logic is pretty simple (these are simple people) - "He doesn't hold the same positions as I do, therefore he must be an idiot." The rest is just post hoc justification.

The likely conflict for Mueller was his work at the Wilmer Hale law firm, which represented Manafort, Kushner, and other organizations and figures relevant to the investigation (there are other I don't remember offhand on the other side). It is also likely that his staff who represented the Clinton Foundation, Ben Rhodes and others received the same waiver.

The arrogant stupidity shines. They extensively used a government iPhone to conceal an illicit affair, which is normally a removable offense. At a minimum, their security clearance should be revoked. Yet it never occurred to them that their iPhone belonged to the government, not them.

THe hearing will be interesting. What can Rosenstein say? That getting rid of Strzok and Davis made everything all right? As well, the DoJ IG is supposedly reporting its findings soon, and it appears that its report will be explosive.

What really needs to happen is for Mueller and his merry band of political activists to be suspended from further activities. As well, the indictment of Manafort and pleas of Papadapolous and Flynn held in abeyance until DoJ gets to the bottom of this. In the meantime, a new SPecial Counsel is appointed with a new staff to start the investigation frmo scratch, including the Clinton emails and Trump-Russia (since they are all part of hte same mosaic).

KittyM: I'm confused by this statement. Wasn't the whole point of appointing a special counselor to investigate claims of collusion and other connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, and to either exonerate the Trump campaign or pursue criminal charges, depending on what was discovered?

Trump has always angrily and loudly denied *any* connection to Russia. If that is true, shouldn't the allegations be relatively easily disproven?

So far, there has been no exculpatory evidence that I have read and quite a bit of inculpatory evidence. But obviously we're not privy to everything that Mueller has.

Ah, is that why the investigation has dragged on so long? Lack of "exculpatory evidence"? (Speaking of Russia, have you ever done much reading on Soviet-era investigative jurisprudence, Kitty? I recommend it.)

I agree that there has been plenty of inculpatory evidence, though. Why, it seems that I wake up to a fresh batch of inculpatory (if peculiarly evanescent) evidence on this Russian collusion thing just about every morning.

If these FBI people all got fired from Team Mueller and demoted it's obvious there is a problem.

It's more like three-card Monte. No one was fired. One guy was moved to HR. The lady (I use that term very loosely knowing what I know now) was simply reassigned. No real consequences for their perfidy.

And: However, the most suspicious text message was sent by Strzok to Page, which was reported by CNN:

"Later in a text from August 15, 2016, Strzok tells Page: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office” – an apparent reference to Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe – “that there's no way he gets elected – but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40 . . . ." Page does not appear to have responded, according to records reviewed by CNN."

And: However, the most suspicious text message was sent by Strzok to Page, which was reported by CNN:

"Later in a text from August 15, 2016, Strzok tells Page: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office” – an apparent reference to Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe – “that there's no way he gets elected – but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40 . . . ." Page does not appear to have responded, according to records reviewed by CNN."